GUWAHATI, India, Jan 3 (Reuters) - India dismissed an elected state government in its troubled northeast after a controversial no-confidence vote triggered political uncertainty there, officials said on Thursday.

The decision by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet would bring Nagaland under federal rule, weeks before the state is due to elect a new legislative assembly.

The state poll is expected to go ahead as planned.

"The union cabinet has decided to impose president's rule in Nagaland because of the prevailing political uncertainty," a senior home ministry official told Reuters by phone from New Delhi. "The state assembly has been dissolved."

The decision came after Nagaland's coalition government, backed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), managed to stay in office even though it lost a no-confidence vote moved by the opposition last month.

The coalition survived after a controversial decision by the assembly speaker not to consider seven votes cast against the government by disgruntled ruling party legislators.

Nagaland is home to India's oldest insurgency, launched by Naga rebels in 1947 demanding the creation of a separate "Greater Nagaland" for ethnic Naga people of the region.

About 20,000 people have been killed in the conflict but a 1997 truce has largely capped violence, although peace talks have made little progress since.

Nagaland's dismissed Chief Minister Neiphu Rio said the move to impose federal rule was "not only illegal and unconstitutional, but also murder of democracy". (Reporting by Biswajyoti Das, editing by Y.P. Rajesh and David Fogarty)

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